Join us for a photographic exhibition and an evening of music, history and poetry.
In 1992 the unemployed and claimant users took control of the Edinburgh Unemployed Workers Centre to stop its closure. In 1994 they resisted the imminent eviction of the Broughton Street Centre by launching a 24 hours per day occupation, which lasted six months. 20 years after the violent eviction of the occupants, an exhibition of photographs to be held at the Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh will remember this experience and discuss why this is still relevant today.
This event is supported by the Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh & Edinburgh Coalition Against Povery. During the opening we’ll present the new stock of Books from ACE InfoShop and the new external mural project.

If you ‘ve ever visited our archives at the SRL you might have noticed that in the years we’ve accumulated quite an amount of radical video and multimedia material on different formats that we try to store at our best. It is now time we start thinking what to do with it, and discuss how we can develop the archive. What films should go in and which should come out? Should we go digital or keep some VHS memories? We are looking for some volunteers of the radical film archive so that there is some cover for an upcoming event and we can do more. anybody interested?

Radical film archive launch: 4th October 14:00–17:00

The radical film archive is a collection of radical films on a hard drive.

An evening of stories of everyday working class lives and strugglesD.D. Johnston in conversation with local activists will presents his most recent novel The Deconstruction of Professor Thrub and will read extracts from his first book Peace, Love and Petrol Bombs. He will also talk about his involvement in the legendary McDonalds Workers Resistance network, and its relevance for workplace organising today. From its initial organising in McDonalds store in Gorgie, MWR’s influence and connections spread world-wide, linking up with fast food workers from Italy to North America. The meeting will be also an occasion to discuss with other local activist and organizers stories from their working lives (with work defined much broader than paid labour – i.e. claimants, domestic and other unpaid forms of work, students, etc.). If you want to present your story just drop us an email at srl@noflag.org.uk These stories might be funny, inspiring, informative, sad, infuriating – whatever. In particular we are interested on anecdotes and tales of specific incidents you’ve encountered working and resisting work, rather than general political positions.The meeting is co-hosted by Anarchist Federation, Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty, Industrial Workers of the World, Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh, Scottish Radical Library, Social Factory Collective.

D.D. Johnston is a novelist and short story writer. He lives in Cheltenham and works at the University of Gloucestershire, where he is a University Teaching Fellow and a senior lecturer in Creative Writing.

His first novel, Peace, Love, & Petrol Bombs, featured in The Sunday Herald’s Books of the Year for 2011, as a choice of Helen Fitzgerald, who said “Peace Love & Petrol Bombs, the debut novel by DD Johnston (AK Press, £8.99), is a non-preachy coming-of-age story set amid the complex and chaotic backdrop of anti-capitalist politics. It’s also funny as all hell.” Popmatters wrote, “this genial, engaging, yet serious search for meaning in a commodified global culture deserves wide acclaim” (John L. Murphy). And the Morning Star wrote that “Peace, Love and Petrol Bombs has a very urgent relevance now and for the immediate future” (Paul Simon). Peace, love, &
Petrol Bombs has been recorded as an audio book for audible.com, and is published in Spanish as Paz, amor y cócteles molotov (Hoja de Lata, 2013; translated by Raquel Duato García).

His second novel, The Deconstruction of Professor Thrub (Barbican Press, 2013), made the judges’ longlist for the Goldsmith’s Prize and was a 2013 book of the year in The Morning Star, where it was described as “determinedly extraordinary”. The Warwick Review called it “an ambitious, erudite work with a profound interest in the world as we find it,” while Libcom.org described it as “A historical epic, a story about love, revolution and the university, with echoes of Luther Blissett’s Q and a lot
of laughs.”

D.D. Johnston also writes short fiction, and you can read one of his stories, ‘The Invitation’, online in issue six of the Lampeter Review. An earlier version of the story was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize.

Angry Workers of the World are a collective using class composition analysis and
Worker’s Inquiry methods in the logistics sector in West London. Class composition is a mode of analysis developed in the extra-parliamentary Italian autonomous movement during the 1960s and 1970s. The workers inquiry method was undertaken as a form of engaged ‘co-research’ bypassing normal hierarchical union structures and dissolving barriers between subject-researcher and object-researched; a technique for developing a closer analysis of worker’s struggles from the point of view of the workers themselves.
What role might this form of ‘co-research’ have in organising new forms of struggle and organisation in the workplace and broader community?
Angry Workers of the World are related to a group of workers / activists at the
forefront of composition and inquiry practice globally, including collectives in India (Kamunist Kranti and Gurgaon Workers News), Wildcat (Germany), and
Mouvement Communiste (France).
They want to meet with like-minded groups and individuals across the UK and
will be visiting Glasgow on Saturday 12th and Edinburgh on Sunday 13th to
discuss class composition and workers inquiry as a method of political struggle
with local workers and activists.